Buying a House in Nebraska

We closed on our house in Nebraska on July 10. It was a crazy process to find this house. The market in Lincoln was so hot that homes in a decent price range and in decent condition were only staying on the market a couple of days. That posed a big problem for us...if I saw a property online it would be gone before we could even travel to town to see it. So, we did what any modern, tech savvy couple would do...we asked our agent to do an iPhone walk through and put in an offer without ever having been in the property. We're not crazy at all, right?!

 Here are the pictures as presented online.


Our offer was accepted and we went under contract from a distance. Justin was scheduled to come back to Lincoln prior to close and he walked through the house. (We aren't actually crazy enough to close on the property sight unseen.) He reported that we would probably want to change the carpet but he thought the house was good.

A few weeks later, my mom and I made a trip up to Lincoln to check out the house, pick carpet, and take measurements. We walked into a nightmare. The house was a mess and the smell was horrible! Not only that but the photos didn't show a true representation of the condition of things like the cabinets, sinks, doors, etc. Even our agent was quite shocked. We had only a couple weeks before we were scheduled to close and I was completely ready to walk away!

Justin and I made several more trips back to Lincoln to look for other properties. In the end though, this was the most reasonably priced property that we could readily move into. Even though I felt like it was in need of more updates than I really wanted to deal with, we proceeded to close on this house. 

Once we closed, we took the boys to check out the house...they LOVED the play set. And I have to say, even to this day, our backyard and the play set are some of the best attributes of this house!


Needless to say, we wanted to freshen up this house right from the start. We had carpet installed before our furniture was delivered. And we painted, painted, painted... (And to be honest, we still have some painting to do if only I could decide on the last few colors.)

 Master Bedroom before and after


Boys room before and after...and a little helper.


Basement rec room


Our furniture finally arrived and even though we weren't done with all the painting, efforts focused on the new task...unpacking.


We have already started doing some of the much needed updates to the house, which I will share in future posts.

Although there were some bumps in the road and some stress with the move (and maybe a few tears), I feel we were very blessed with this move!